In an article entitled, “First Blood: Introducing Menstrual Activism,” Salon.com explores the ‘negative cultural stance toward menstruation’ and what is being done to counter it.
The background, from Salon.com:
Every woman has one. Not what you’re thinking — that too, yes, but I am referring to a menstruation horror story. A bright blood stain blooming on the back of white jeans, a first period that has the audacity to arrive during gym class or one that colors a yellow swimsuit red while you are waterskiing with your grandfather, as happened to Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, the editor of “My Little Red Book.”… But does the embarrassment many women feel arise from a negative cultural stance toward menstruation? And do we need a concerted effort to address it?
In an article published in the Guardian on Friday, writer Kira Cochrane situates “My Little Red Book” at the center of a new wave, as it were, of “menstrual activism.” (The movement is also called “radical menstruation,” “menstrual anarchy” or “menarchy.”) The term, she writes, “is used to describe a whole range of actions,” such as “simple efforts to speak openly about periods, radical affronts to negative attitudes, and campaigns for more environmentally friendly sanitary products,” since a woman could create her own personal landfill with the 11,400 tampons she uses in her lifetime. (What I want to know is: Who counted?)
The sociological commentary:
Chris Bobel, a women’s studies professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of an upcoming book, “New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation,” explains that many “menstrual activists begin by thinking, wait a minute! Do we have to regard our period as something dirty? Do we have to greet a girl’s first period with silence?” According to Cochrane, these women are attempting to take “the shame out of periods,” to overcome the supposed “menstrual taboo.”
But are significant changes really happening?
But the greatest indicator that the cultural attitude toward menstruation has shifted may be the ads for “feminine products.” Ads have ceased to be so euphemistic you have no idea what product is being peddled (“Be free and active!”). The latest from Tampax are hilariously direct in their wink-wink indirectness. Mother Nature (played by Catherine Lloyd Burns) offers a “monthly gift” — a box wrapped in red paper, a symbol obvious enough to please teenage boys and dissertation writers alike — to various women (in one ad, it’s Serena Williams) at inopportune moments. When primetime viewers are savvy enough about menstruation to get in-jokes about periods and blood, it’s a safe bet that the stigma has eased.
Those who prefer to remain quiet about the subject may not be evincing gynophobia so much as conversational etiquette. It may be an act of modesty, not of shame. People don’t much discuss erectile dysfunction or bowel problems either, and not for reasons of gender, or because those bodily processes are particularly taboo. When menstruation is a relevant subject between people — girlfriends and boyfriends, husbands and wives, female friends — it’s not generally treated as humiliating or distasteful. And indeed, women don’t seem to feel much fear about talking about it. Case in point: “My Little Red Book,” for which 90-odd female writers agreed to share their stories.
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